Last week there was a Supreme Court decision granting freelance writers stronger control over distribution of their works. Publishers sign a contract for a freelancer's work for distribution in print and other media. Well, 15 years ago when there was no big Internet and CD ROMs weren't as popular either, the contracts did not include distribution over the Internet. Today's contracts do have that clause and have had it for a few years.

Meanwhile there are sites with lots of old repurposed content and of course there are all those anthology CD ROMs that you can buy (like all the Dragon Magazines on CD ROM). The publishers either have to get new contracts somehow (which would be quite a challenge unless there was some sort of global pool a la ASCAP) or remove the content which is what several are doing.

There's a bit of hype in that some people say "we're going to lose all this content and it'll be hard to find for researchers." And I think there was a story on tv about it also -- it'll make it harder for historians. There'll be this gap in historical records. All rather alarmist. All the works affected are already avaiable in print (they may be hard to find, but that's what libraries are for). You have to enforce the rights of copyright holders.

Speaking of which, it's time to throw away all those tapes I've made over the last five or so years. Hundreds of tapes so it'll take a while to whittle them down (it's tough to go cold turkey). Especially for shows that I can buy commercially, those I should definitely throw away...

I just saw this old episode of Spin City. This is the one where the police department is miffed at the mayor. Bingo the police dog dies and Mike decides that this is the opportunity for the mayor to pay honor to the dog. But then they lose the dog and replace him with a live dog at the last minute and that dog sits up in his casket during the eulogy. Funny.

There was this one woman reporter hanging around that I didn't remember. It was only at the end of the episode when she and Mike were getting ready for bed that I remembered. Spin City started out with Mike having a girl friend who was a reporter for the newspaper. That was one of the central premises of the sitcom, and Carla Gugino played Mike's girl friend Ashley. She left sometime during the season or maybe at the end of the season. Too bad because I liked that part of the show...

I just finished reading "Callahan's Key" by Spider Robinson. Not a great book but not a bad book and actually quite enjoyable. If you ever get a chance read the first couple of the Callahan books: "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and "Time Travelers Strictly Cash". When he first started writing Robinson wrote short stories set at Callahan's and the two books are compilations of those short stories.

Because they're short stories, they're focused and lean and get to the point quite well. Great to read. Spider Robinson is in my mind *the* best short story writer I've ever read. To save argument I could narrow it to science fiction humorous short stories, but I won't. And even the later books are quite good, especially the Lady Sally's books. It's the last couple of books, the Mary's Place books that seem a bit less vibrant in comparison.

And I think the big reason is that by then he's not introducing a raft of new characters, just using the ones introduced in previous books. One thing that Spider does well is introduce a character or two that fit perfectly into the story, that are integral to the story, in fact the short story revolves around the new character. It's really interesting to try to figure out who this new person is and what problem he will bring to solve.

All that's lost in the last two books. We have novels that have one basic plot with a couple of subplots. But it just seems like a short story drawn out way too long. It's a shame. Robinson has written other books, which I haven't read. And maybe those books are better.

The last thing I want to comment about Robinson's writings is that he's very liberal. In the Liberal Party sort of sense. Very sixties free love, drugs are ok, government should stay out of the way philosophy that is reflected in the characters. Usually I haven't minded before. This time it was a bit worse, maybe I'm just less tolerant. But even with the negative things I've just written. He's a fine writer and it was a good book to read.